


Appropriated Opposition

by Skeletorific



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Homestuck 2: Beyond Canon, Other, The Homestuck Epilogues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27846378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeletorific/pseuds/Skeletorific
Summary: Somewhat outdated but I've had enough
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Appropriated Opposition

In 2016, Andrew Hussie brought his webcomic  _ Homestuck _ to an end. A staple of internet culture since its launch in 2009, the comic had acquired a reputation for its esoteric writing, complex (or less generously, meandering) plot, and its intensely metatextual nature, with many characters within the comic being not only aware of their nature as textual beings, but consciously crafting their narrative placement. These themes were taken to their (arguably) logical extreme in 2019, at the release of  _ The Epilogues _ to the website on which  _ Homestuck _ was archived.  _ The Epilogues _ attracted a great deal of criticism for any number of reasons. The material which it deals with is often grim and upsetting. Many beloved characters are forced into apparently pointless suffering, and others act in ways that many fans regarded as utterly detached from their previous selves. In response to all of this, many wondered what on earth Hussie’s motivation could have been. Surprisingly enough, an answer was given. An official letter from Andrew Hussie, uploaded to both the Homestuck Reddit and released on a popular fan podcast, Perfectly Generic Podcast. The work was titled “The Homestuck Epilogues: Bridges and Offramps”, and to date it remains the clearest statement of authorial intent extant for  _ The Epilogues  _ as experimental fiction. 

Contextually, it is important to remember that  _ The Epilogues _ bear many of the key qualities of the original  _ Homestuck  _ that span beyond simply being about the same characters in the same world. Like  _ Homestuck _ ,  _ The Epilogues _ is an almost unreasonably lengthy work that plays with the idea of canonicity and continuity. It begins with a prologue, at the end of which the protagonist is asked to make a seemingly arbitrary choice at a picnic: does he want Meat? Or Candy? Both of these words link to separate epilogues, with completely separate story circumstances, timelines, and relationships between the same characters. Both of these timelines are regarded as equally canon, and yet that equality may not amount to very much, given that the work itself undermines its own canonicity. It is this dubious canonicity which Hussie seeks to address and support in the aforementioned letter, laying forward what has widely been regarded as his thesis for the new era of  _ Homestuck _ content:

> I'm making an overt gesture that is beginning to diminish my relevance as the sole authority on the direction this story takes, what should be regarded as canon, and even introducing some ambiguity into your understanding of what canon means as the torch is being passed into a realm governed by fan desires.

While WhatPumpkin, Hussie’s company, has continued to act as the primary source for “official” material, popular fan interpretations regard this as a call for the democratization of canon, an almost unprecedented equation of “fanon” and canon content as equally true, relevant, and essential to the nature of  _ Homestuck _ .

This letter is fascinating to read as a literary theorist, particularly one invested in reader response theory. Hussie discusses how the upset and controversy surrounding the work was for the most part engineered, an intentional experiment in audience reception. As he puts it 

I...think many of the negative feelings the story creates isn't just an urgent prompt for the reader to imagine different ideas, or ways to resolve the new narrative dilemmas. It's also an opportunity for people to discuss any of the difficult content critically, and for fandom in general to continue developing the tools for processing the negative emotions art can generate. Sorting that out has to be a communal experience, and it's an important part of the cycle between creating and criticizing art.

In other words, if negative emotions are experienced, so far as Hussie is concerned this is a net positive. He wants to encourage greater reader engagement, ask that his fans reflect critically on the content they are consuming and to provide their own take on it.

On the surface level this would appear to be an excellent example of Stuart Hall’s notion of negotiated, or even oppositional decoding. Within Hall’s conception, a negotiated code is that which “acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations, while, at a more restricted, situational level, it makes its own ground-rules, it operates with 'exceptions’ to the rule” (17). In other words, while negotiated readers are willing to respect the apparent intent of the author’s ideological encodement, they likely bring their own frameworks (and objections) to their reading and try to find the compromise between the two. The oppositional reader takes these objections one step further, being fully and completely opposed to the author’s perceived framework and instead filtering the text through their own lens. Both of these are in opposition to some degree to the dominant-hegemonic reader, who accepts the author’s framework as true and reads the text in near absolute adherence to that intent.

Hussie attempting to encourage the creation of negotiated and oppositional readers is certainly not unprecedented. It has many connections to the Brechtian tradition of theatre, which seeks at all time to make the audience aware of their own position as spectators and the fictional nature of what they are seeing. It can even be argued that he strives to achieve something almost creatively noble. As he says: “fandom is something which can develop better skills as well. Skills like critical discussion, dealing constructively with negative feelings resulting from the media they consume, interacting with each other in more meaningful ways”. In an era where fandom is an increasingly dominant way to engage with media, trying to encourage a new kind of discourse is not inherently a bad idea.

However, as the  _ Homestuck _ phase of “post-canonicity” continues with  _ Homestuck^2  _ and  _ Pesterquest _ , the increasing question that comes to the forefront is simply, can an author ever intentionally and totally encourage opposition within their own text? The longer the experiment goes on, the more the cracks begin to reveal themselves. Versions of characters that were once regarded as intentionally distorted continue to be the ones featured in the text, to the point that they are beginning to influence fandom conceptions of the characters as a whole. Furthermore, what is becoming additionally apparent is the text’s obliviousness to the author’s own blindspots and assumptions. This is apparent even in this letter. When Andrew Hussie says that a reader implicitly assumes that content taking place during an intermission is mostly irrelevant to the broader plot, is he not himself making an assumption about the reader going in, and their perception that an intermission would normally be irrelevant? 

Of course, it can be argued that by becoming an oppositional reader, challenging the assumptions of the author will naturally follow. However, to be an oppositional reader (or even a negotiated one), one must implicitly have an ideological space apart from the author. To create difference, one must be free to leave the original behind. The issue with this is that by weaving this kind of opposition into the text itself, Hussie has appropriated that space. It is the difference between doing analysis as an independent reader and being prompted into it by a high school teacher. Certainly the end product of that analysis might vary between readers, but they will all in some sense be doing it on command. All opposition thus becomes hegemony. Hussie is able to take credit for a reader’s dissatisfaction by arguing that it’s an intended effect. If you are upset or angered or at all in disagreement with what the story has produced, then he has completed his mission. But if you are satisfied, intrigued, and even happy, then he has further content for you to read. Either way, all roads lead back to a propagation of the text, despite Hussie’s insistence that “by reopening an already closed-circuit narrative, what you're really doing is introducing destabilizing forces into something which had already reached a certain equilibrium”. It becomes an exercise in narrative guilt, but one that is hardly cathartic for the readers, with a pervasive sense that they are at all points being taunted for having the audacity to care in the first place. 

Is this to say the experiment is inherently flawed or should never have been performed? Not at all. Even an experiment with different outcomes than intended can produce results worth studying. With luck, this may result in a new subgenre of metatexts, one in which the author is more judicious in their use of audience antagonism. The reader does not have to be goaded, taunted, or insulted to bring them into the interpretive circle. Often, what is simply required is that they be left alone, to contemplate and engage. Creative acts are a conversation, and no single individual can carry that conversation for their partners.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Works Cited

Hall, Stuart. “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse.”  _ Council Of Europe  _ _ Colloquy on "Training In The Critical Reading Of Televisual Language” University of Leicester September 1973 _ , Centre for Cultural Studies. https://core.ac.uk/download /pdf/81670115.pdf

Hussie, Andrew. “The Homestuck Epilogues: Bridges and Off-Ramps.” posted by Makin,  _ Reddit _ , 24 Aug. 2019, https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/cuywff/the_ homestuck_epilogues_bridges_and_offramps_new/.


End file.
